Anathema - For your blood
by seriouslymilady
Summary: A step away from death, Caroline is sent to the past, exactly the night of the hybrids' massacre, with one and only one task: to save the unsalvageable. But what happened after graduation, after Klaus left New Orleans? And what will happen now that Caroline can amend the mistakes of the past? One story, two plot lines. A dark Klaroline fanfic Crossover TO&TVD/Time travel/What if


**N/A: **Hi dear readers! I'm before you with a new story, Klaroline obviously! I really-really-really hope you enjoy it!

**Thanks to:** _venomandchampagne_ for her awesome betaing skill ( I love you, hunny!)

**Warning: **If you are looking for a crossover fanfic with Klaus and Caroline as happy father and stepmother where everything is okay and there is no problem, or Caroline and Hayley happy together in the same house… well, my advice is to not read this. Repeat: I don't like the baby's plot or Hayley, of course.

**Disclaimer one: **My intention with this story is to follow two plot lines: Caroline changing the story (time-travel/what if), and Caroline's past before that moment, why she goes to NoLa (crossover).

**Disclaimer two:** I don't own anything

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**ANATHEMA**

_**~ for your blood ~**_

**Prologue**

_Sanctus Espiritus_

_Is this what we deserve?_

_Can we break free from chains_

_Of never-ending agony?_

(Within Temptation – Our Solemn Hour)

_There's a stifling heat, not one puff of wind, only the burning air. The city that never sleeps is a tomb of misery and desolation. It's a beaten woman, who tries in vain to conceal bruises from the world. The wind whispers dead words. A memento which echoes through deafening silence._

_Memento mori, my dear, preferably quite soon._

_Caroline cannot help but scream at the sight of the bloodied head of her best friend, torn off from his body, with wide, empty eyes staring at her and his mouth set in an eternal silent scream. Caroline trembles in shock and breathes fast and uncontrollably._

_A burst of laughter comes from the creature._

_Vampire blood is splattered everywhere over the floor and the walls of the house, shattered bones with hunks of flesh still on them are spread around and less identifiable parts lay scattered across the ground. Several heavily mutilated corpses are sprawled on the ground. _

_Carnage._

_The creature would kill her like it had done with everyone else. Caroline doesn't care: the original of her bloodline is dead ― her original ― so it's a matter of time to her, perhaps minutes. She would be brave. She wouldn't fear her death. But when she looks into those deep, crystal eyes, the only thing she felt is fear. As if she is looking into the eyes of Death herself._

_The creature standing above the scene licks the thick, scarlet liquid off its fingers and looks smirking at her. It laughs and then grabs the charred body of the original hybrid in the back of the head and slams him down into the ground, continuing to run and scraping him along over the granite-hard soil. _

_She wants to throw up at seeing his corpse mutilated, the same body that she hugged at night. The body which was her home._ _She wants to pull out her eyes through the back of her head._

_The three girls gaze wide-eyed at the horrific scene. At the sickening sight, Caroline feels despair and pain overwhelms her. She screams desperately as her heart falls into emptiness._ _The other two girls hold her down as she tries to wriggle free. _

_Noticing that not much of the skull remains after a little while, the creature releases its 'toy'. It smirks deviously looking passed the dead originals, looking to vanquish her with her witch friends. _

_The creature angrily screams. _

_The creature wants them dead. Her dead._

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When everything you know is a lie, when truth is just a big black hole full of lies, omissions, and secrets, when believing becomes dangerous, what do you rely on or trust?

No one. You just need to stop believing in people, and focus on yourself, focus on your instincts ― w_hat is instinct?_

_It's an innate behavior, it's not a reflex, not a simple response to a specific stimulus. Instincts are inborn complex patterns of behavior that emerge in living organisms. In humans. Instinct is the opposite of reason, an automatic pilot that you don't always use 'cause it becomes an addiction, and you end up losing your mind and turning into an animal. _

_Where is a manual for instinct? ―_

— even if it's a matter of life and death….even in immortality. No one is really immortal, nor is God. I mean, God is as an entity, but if He had body, flesh, blood and ancient drives, He could not be immortal: anything solid can be destroyed. Anything.

_It can be destroyed whether it first cannot destroy us._

Her hands are trembling.

Caroline. Sweet Caroline. Fair and brave Caroline. Caroline is beautiful, strong and full of light. Caroline is human, although she is also a monster. Caroline loves and hates with passion. Caroline knows good and evil.

Caroline believes that anybody capable of love is capable of being saved.

Caroline is dying.

" How much time do I have left, Davina?"

Each word is a struggle, a battle against herself, against the death that threatens to throw her back to whence she came. To ashes.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

" No more than half an hour, I can hear that from your blood… it's desperately screaming."

_It's not the one screaming — _Caroline thinks, she doesn't feel the need to say it, they already know that. They were there when they saw her heart crush into many pieces like glass, and these to be spread into a chaos of pain. They were there when they saw him burn. Him and his family. They were there when they realized that time was just waiting to eat their life.

The life of all them.

She can't cry again, she's cried enough.

"How far have you gotten with the spell?"

" I'm almost done," says Bonnie.

Caroline is nervous, vampires sweat when they're going to die, when all else is lost — Mother Nature is a bitch. She gives something human like sweat to vampires as a final gift before moving to the Other Side.

The sky above is a pure blue, free of clouds. The sun beats down on the land with a warmth that seems to be growing every second and is quickly encroaching on unbearably hot. It doesn't bother her. She is more than used to the desert. She is in the same desecrated land where nine months before she had been found alone, almost fully drained, and with no memories about herself and her life, as close to death as now. She isn't even sure how long she'd been here. It seems like it has been an eternity, and maybe it has. In a way she feels as though she'd always been here, in that desert land.

She's gradually losing her mind —

_No! I must fight it. I can handle it. Won't be long now…_

She's dying, apocalypse is almost upon them, the world is going to be reborn into some kind of dreadful, and across from her are the most powerful witches in the world, in life and in death.

Davina, the first and last blood witch the story ever saw. A curse to all witches, a means to most people, an Oracle of blood to others. The blood controlling life, being life ― blood, life, power: the greatest three credos of being supernatural.

Bonnie, the last Bennett, cursed by Sprits. The witch taken over by expression, the only one ghost who fought Death and who has gotten even. Not dead not alive. She is the ghost who is half living — _You can't kill her. You can't touch her. But you can be afraid of her._

And then there's her, Caroline Forbes, the baby vampire perceived as a sacrificial lamb, a pawn in a game between titans. Not many people know that in chess if you are a good player you can turn a pawn into a Queen — Caroline is not designed to be a weak lamb, collateral damage working as a means to an end. She is born to be Queen, to reign over the living, over the dead.

To illuminate darkness and to obscure the same blinding light. She's born as an objective. Saving. Whether it's a friend, her family, her love, or rather the whole human-and-not race. Caroline Forbes is born to give a second chance — _isn't that so ironic, that the second choice gives a second chance?_

_Horrifyingly ironic._

" Okay, I'm done!" announces Bonnie.

Bonnie, her best friend, her sister, and now her hope. Caroline looks at her, she looks the same but also different . What is it that makes her different? The energy around? Being a ghost? — Caroline doesn't know, but if she was a believer, she would have gotten down on her knees and prayed to Bonnie like a Goddess

_Maybe she really is a Goddess._

What does it mean to be a living ghost?

" Me too," says Davina.

But if Bonnie is a Goddess, who or what is Davina? She's something, and also her friend. _Not only my friend._ Davina is her custodian — a name lost to history, as old as speech —. The blood witch has been her lifeline when everything just seemed lost, her first friend in that city, the only one who has protected her where some could have destroyed her.

Usually witches kill vampires, they don't try to save them.

At first, Bonnie isn't sure if the blonde has heard her. It is as though Caroline is looking through her instead of at her. Like she isn't entirely there. Then Caroline meets her eyes and she suddenly seems to realize what her friend is thinking about.

" Care, you know that this is no…"

" Don't Bonnie, please. No farewells and hugs. Just tell me the rules."

Hardly speaks.

There's really little time.

Her body is trembling.

They must hurry up.

Bonnie is still looking up at her and nods understanding. She knows this is not a real goodbye, both will see each other again but everything will have changed: another herself who is and isn't herself —

_Not a ghost, not who she is now, but ever Bonnie._

"The spell is permanent, remember that. When you wake up as your past self, this reality will cease to exist forever, you cannot do anything to come back here. Do you hear me, Care?"

She is struck with fear, she is not ready to lose this reality – to lose them.

" Caroline, you can't afford to hold back now, at the least you risk unleashing hell on earth and the end of the same life. You must be sure," says Davina as she put her hand on the vampire's.

Suddenly Caroline feels reassured, her fears are destroyed by a strength within her, roaring as a lion putting up a fight, winning like the one and only king of the jungle. The blonde vampire smiles at her friend, knowing what she did: Davina can through blood control Caroline's fear because of being a blood witch and her custodian. _Her lifeline._

" I am, I can do this."

" Once you wake up in the past, you will remember everything" says Davina, glancing at her protected, she can sense every single emotion in her. "You can't talk about time travel, and you can't change the course of all events, Caroline."

" What events can't be changed, precisely?"

" You can't kill her, Caroline," answers the blood witch.

" Why?"

" I can't tell you why, I don't know why… I think there's more to it than that. I just know we need her alive... at least at the moment."

" Fine!" Caroline replies distinctly unconvinced.

" And Silas shall be awakened," Bonnie warned her, she knows this friend of hers really well. Too well.

" What? No!" she yells, then is coughing blood. " There must be another way!"

" Care please, you have very little time. We need Silas to do this, you know that."

" But you could…"

_Die._

" If that really is my destiny, so be it."

Bonnie, so strong and determined. Bonnie, so pure. Bonnie, so brave alive and dead. Caroline wants to cry, swears Bonnie will not die. Not again. Never more. Hell will freeze over before she lets Bonnie sacrifice herself — _and I'll get him back._

She shall change the history that had been written by a sick Deus ex machina.

" What time period am I going to?"

" The day of the hybrids' slaughter."

Bonnie looks at Caroline and she understands very well the strength of her feelings, she would like to save everybody like a champion. Ironically enough, she really is one now.

" Care, Carol Lockwood must die."

" No! Maybe there's some other way…" her voice is full of concern ― she coughs again.

But Bonnie is right. The slaughter of twelve hybrids, the death of Carol Lockwood; two situations that had triggered a changeless sequence. Her train of thought travels by a cold, circuitous route that makes her sick to think it: Carol Lockwood was born to give birth to Tyler and to die —

Such a misogynistic and ruthless truth.

Born to die, not the apparent death before turning into a vampire, or one condemning you to the purgatory of supernatural beings, the other side. I'm talking the true human death, that's what Carol Lockwood is waiting for: to pass out of existence; to get wiped off the face of the earth, remaining as a bittersweet memory to those who are alive. Only to her son.

" So be it," she repeats what Bonnie said earlier.

In the end she is prepared to do anything for the salvation of her loved ones, even to sacrifice innocent people. This is certainly not the first time she would sacrifice some for the good of others — _remember twelve witches, little Caroline?_

Then, Caroline looks at Davina, the only question in the plan. She'll do anything to meet her again, but she is fucking afraid that something will come between them, that there will be some damage done to cause that. Something totally irreversible. She's terrified about losing her. She cannot lose her custodian, neither now nor ever. She'd be just lost without her.

But Davina holds onto her hand.

" I'll always be your custodian, never forget it."

" Never."

It's some kind of hug, the word draws you in, and it's pleasant and you feel safe, like in a warm blanket.

" Care, it's now time."

No heartbreaking farewell, no promise, no sweet soothing words. They don't need these.

She nods, as she is bleeding from the mouth. Vomiting blood. The pain bubbling through her, her blood like molten fire and her nerves screaming in agony.

" See you soon, girls!"

Strange black spirals coil across her arms and legs. She cannot feel it, but can see it. As she moves on, the spirals wrap around her body.

And then Caroline vanishes… within a minute of dying.

Now it's all up to her.

Now she must go to him.

Now he must follow the will of fate.

But Caroline doesn't know that underneath the red thread facade' bringing lovers together, fate reveals its true nature: a flesh-eating flower. Her flesh. There's nothing romantic about a destiny taking you adrift, destroying your dreams, your security. Caught in a web of lies and hidden truths. Trying to throttle you while time decides if you're worthy to live or die.

It's a bloody game. It's a deadly game. It's a chess game between Fate and Time... and all of them are just pawns on an invisible chessboard.

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**I**

**Rewind**

**Alternate Reality – Mystic Falls **

Time travel is not like everyone thinks. You don't wake up in another world before another worried you, nor do you take over their body. Caroline doesn't wake up in her old body, wondering where the other Caroline is. It's more like lighting. A union of future memories blending with those of the past to create a new Caroline, more conscious and mature, but still the same old Caroline. So Caroline does not open her eyes, wondering where she is; she has only a little dizziness that left her dazed because of too many memories.

She remembers everything; about Silas and Stefan, about Bonnie, about the ritual, New Orleans and Davina.

About Klaus.

By Gods, she is totally in love with Klaus. Desperately.

_Nik…_

She closes her eyes just a second, to think about her future and her past.

_Okay, I can do it. _

_Hell, yeah, I can do it!_

The big night is coming to a close. The Grill is under more pressure than ever, full of lovely Christmas decorations, and positioned centrally there's a picture that she knows very well. The snow was falling sparingly outside, adults drinking and talking, and children playing. Caroline looks down at her beautiful ivory dress, as he moves close to her with _another_ champagne glass. It's their thing, after all.

_Klaus._

She didn't behave that time: as always, Caroline had played the little blonde distraction's role in line with her boyfriend and that were-slut's wish to destroy Klaus. She's never hated herself for her for-others'-sakes act more than now. She had sold herself to a cause wasn't hers — like a whore but not for sex: Caroline prostituted herself for loyalty.

_Because that's what you felt like, isn't it little Caroline? _

_For the sake of your boyfriend, your friends, you sold the rest of yourself. You didn't like to do it, to deceive, but you it needed to for them. When did the game become reality, little Caroline? Lied to Tyler when you said everything was okay, lied to your friends when you said it wasn't a problem playing a distraction, lied to Klaus when he believed the two of you were linked somehow, and you lied to yourself when you kept telling yourself that there was nothing between you and Klaus_ —

— But now things have changed. She has changed. She isn't the old Caroline Forbes, she is now a new Caroline, one who suffered, fought, and loved like never before. I'm not talking about the first love that has been somewhat diluted within a tepid friendship, but the love with a capital L, that is what she always wanted for her life. . . . Now she's ready to save her first love and her last because she loves both of them, but in different ways. Caroline loves Tyler because she helped him to turn into a werewolf, because he's the first boyfriend who totally loved her, because she would do everything in her power to help him. She loves him like a sweet memory of her old self.

And then there's Klaus. The Original Hybrid. The pure evil. The lonely man. Caroline loves Klaus in the same hopeless way as Catherine loved Heathcliff. It took long enough, but in the end Caroline fell madly in love with him. He's her changeless eternal stone, always in her mind as a part of herself. Loving Klaus is not a pleasure, a heartbeat, nor "I'll go wherever you will go". Loving Klaus is a total annihilation, it leaves you breathless and drives you insane. It kills and revives you. Loving Klaus is a basic need like feeding, drinking and sleeping. Essential.

" Where'd you go, Caroline?"

His voice, his accent, his gaze. Oh God, she has missed him. It's not been long either, an hour since she saw him horribly die. She wants to cry and to rush into his arms ― it's a matter of time before she does it - but first she has to earn his confidence.

" What?"

" You left suddenly, and now here you are again, love."

The way he looks at her with those sky blue eyes has been always so intense! So possessive. It always gives her the creeps.

" Oh, yeah..." says Caroline attempting to give the man a smile, but is pretty sure that she failed miserably.

_I was plotting with my boyfriend and your hybrids against you._

Caroline doesn't answer. She continues to stare at Klaus, a thoughtful look on her face. The hybrid frowns, wondering what was going on in the baby vampire's mind — and if he really wants to know. He has a bad feeling about this.

" A penny for 'em, love." At Caroline's questioning look, he continues. " Sweetheart, I can tell you are afflicted by something. It must be something rather significant given that you have not yet insulted me or thrown champagne in my face."

Caroline stays silent again. Klaus waits patiently for her to take heart and answer; he's surprised to notice that the baby vampire's gaze looks grieved, guilty almost.

" Klaus… I've something to tell you, and you are not gonna like it," she says as he frowns.

And so, she tells him everything about Tyler and Hayley's plan, about the hybrids pretending to be sired, about her playing the distraction's role, about the plan to put him in body's Rebekah, and then about how she and Stefan were just not sure what they were going to do. There is a silence, and she translates that as _'now he kills me'_, probably wrathful at what she has said. Caroline suppresses a shiver.

He stares hard at her for several long minutes. Hurt. Betrayed. Once again alone. Now he must kill his fake-family that he has been looking for, for a thousand years. He must be alone — _This is your fate, boy. _

_You were born to live and die totally alone. _

He says nothing to her nor even pays much attention to her. As a matter of fact, after a melancholy glance Klaus turns back to his picture and seems to ignore her presence completely —

— it's hard to truly like someone when you are forced to analyze their every move, writing them up in long, coded reports in your mind, and asking yourself _'are you blind, can't you see they're using you?';_ asking if they are lying and are trying again, again and again, to kill you.

" Why did you tell me?" Klaus asks finally breaking the silence.

It was a question he thinks he knows the answer to. The bloodline.

"I don't want anything to happen to you," she whispers staring at him intensely. "All day I've been trying to remind myself of all the horrible things you've done, and I can't do it. Klaus... you are capable of being a better man, I know it."

" I don't believe you" he said turning away from her.

He says nothing, just looks at her and then walks away from her. Caroline wants to follow him, reassure him, swear to him that he won't be lonely ever again. And say sorry —_ Sorry. Sorry, Nik. I can't believe I have been so blind — _but now she cannot do it. She knows he is going to meet Stefan, then going to kill the hybrids. Her task was to talk to Klaus before Hayley, and now to meet in the bathroom with Tyler and the were-slut.

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She ends up in the Grill's bathroom with her neck snapped, this time because of Tyler.

She told him to run away, don't trust Hayley because there's no witch, she had intended to betray him from the beginning and to disclose everything to Klaus. She shows no fear, but inside she worried for Tyler's safety. For Klaus. She wonders if Klaus would be able to forgive her. In the previous past he did, but now... she can't get his hurt look out of her head, as if she was able to read "betrayed" and "fooled" in his eyes.

Tyler glances at her once more. Now that she has those eerie blank eyes on her though, Caroline understands she broke him definitively — _but Tyler does not yet know that you have 'killed' his mother. What do you think Tyler's gonna do? And do you think you're any better than Hayley? Now you're the one doing the killing of the hybrids, Carol Lockwood and soon the witches. _

_What will you say yourself to so you can sleep at night, little Caroline?_

She curses Bonnie and her spell, it would've been a lot easier if she had been able to say everything, the whole truth.

Hayley looks upon her with hate, if looks could kill, at the simplest, Caroline would find herself burned alive. Before running away ― _run, little she-wolf. The running is all that remains for you, both in this and the other life_ ― Hayley speaks in a low voice, saying something in a language dead for centuries: " _Aquila non capit muscas." _

Words that Caroline will figure out later…

So, Tyler breaks her neck.

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_Rest in peace Mrs. Lockwood, and forgive me if you can._

She feels bad for Tyler and his mother, even for the hybrids ― _choke back tears, little Caroline. You are willing to do anything to save him. Don't cry, yours are just crocodile tears._

He is there, and everything loses sense to her. Dirty with blood, he has a bottle of champagne in his hand, and smells of alcohol. It breaks her heart to see him like this. She cannot handle seeing him so sad, so incredibly alone. If solitude had been a look it would look like Niklaus.

_My Niklaus._

She can smell the blood. She sees the blood. A sickly, sweet and ferrous smell reminiscent of death, mingled in the air with the scent of alcohol. Once, she would have been bothered by the stench. Now she likes it. Caroline finds herself staring at the blood on Klaus' face, tracing the red flecks with her gaze. He was gorgeous even dirty with blood, she thinks totally enchanted.

"Such a sight," Klaus murmured drunk, jerking her out of her thoughts. "Would you not agree, love? I just killed my hybrids, and now your Tyler's mother... I don't think I could ever tire of seeing it."

"Mockery does not suit you, Klaus," Caroline said with her soft voice, but also a hint of warning in the tone. "Was it worth it? Now you have your revenge, will it make all this okay?"

He deprives Tyler of the woman who brought him into the world, the last part of his family.

He killed his own mother twice, and now Tyler's ― _whose mother will be next, boy?_

" He took your family away from you and you took away his. That is the way it really happened, isn't it?"

Klaus doesn't look at her, doesn't want to look at her. He feels dirty before her eyes. She makes him feel guilty and vulnerable. Weak. Oh, Goddamned, he hates feeling, hates being open to her like a bloody book. She's eighteen, a baby compared to him, so... how does she do that?

How could she demolish his defenses?

" Every day that I walk these streets," Klaus whispers slowly. "All I see are the people I've killed, Caroline."

_I know you are not a heartless monster. You are more than that._

"My entire life," he murmurs in such a low voice that Caroline has to strain to hear him. "My entire life was wasted, trying to break the curse, and wanting to make hybrids." He shakes his head once, to clear the thoughts.

_A family ― _this is his thought_. _

She comes near Klaus, not angry, not sad, just concerned. For him. She remembers what Stefan said that night, _the first time_ that Klaus killed the hybrids, that all of them do terrible things, that Klaus had never known a genuine family who he could rely upon. She had felt guilty, but then she got a call from Tyler... and feeling guilty had been written off. She still can't forgive herself for being so bloody blind. So slow that she couldn't get that Tyler took from him something he sought for his entire life.

_A family_ ― this is her thought.

_That is where all the pain stems from, isn't it boy? Someone who accepts you as you are, who loves nobody really cares about you, nor your slaves, boy ―. _He refuses to face the facts, ignores the burning sensation that would have once accompanied the desire to cry, had his tear ducts not been destroyed.

He is afraid of himself.

How pathetic.

" Leave Caroline."

" Klaus…"

" Is this what madly loving is really about, Caroline? Getting someone's blood on your hands, and just repainting them over and over again?"

A sort of prickly feeling runs up and down her spine. She wants to shout that she isn't a hypocrite anymore, that she loves him more than she loves life. She wants to kiss him and then escape with only him, go do something nice and sane, like travel the world.

_Yes. I would kill for you. Anyone. _

" Leave, Caroline."

" No," she says resolutely. Too many damn times in her past she has left him alone, she played him for a war not her own. No, she isn't going to make that mistake again. Not ever again.

" Why are you here, love? Do you want to beg for your mutt's life? Or perhaps you are going to distract me while Stefan takes the sword."

That insult enters her like poison. She cannot pretend to understand everything about Nik's twisted mind, but she knew him too well. What he had said was clear enough to her. He would never confess it, but in the undertones of his voice, he had practically screamed _"I don't want to die alone"._

No one wants to die alone, not even an immortal.

" You really think that low of me?"

" Yes."

It's all dejavu with a bad taste, where no one was bitten, where there's a dead body among them who they are ignoring. It's not important, the drowned woman before them ― it's not important that this night a son cries for his mother, asking himself and God why he did not die instead of her. It's all an issue of priorities. Of choices. Greater and lesser evils.

Carol's death is collateral damage ―

― _reminds you of something, little Caroline?_

The reason she returned here is the real and only problem ― _Happy Hunger Games, Caroline! Now your every action is going to irreversibly damage other people. _

_Can you save them all or will you be the only one remaining in this death game?_

" Leave, Caroline. Now," Klaus repeats. " If you stay here, I will not answer for my actions."

" You want to kill me?" she demands, fearless. She's challenging him, he knows that as she does.

" I could do it."

" But you'd never hurt me."

She suppressed another shiver and reminded herself that Klaus would never kill her ― _but he can still hurt you. _

_Don't underestimate human feelings, little Caroline._

She takes a step forward. Then another. Caroline knows that she was dealing with a cornered wild animal. She takes a breath. Klaus looks at her. For just a second, he turns his head, meets her eyes with a stark, trapped gaze. She freezes. She draws in a deep breath through her nose, then another, her heart pounding.

" Klaus please…" Caroline says with a breaking voice.

And then Klaus breaks her neck ―

― _And may the odds be ever in your favor._

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*****_**Aquila non capit muscas: **__an eagle doesn't catch filies_

Thank you for reading.

I'll update this story as often as I can, but only when inspiration strikes me.

Please let me know what you think! Reviews will encourage faster typing!

You can also find me on Tumblr at seriouslymilady!

**_Chapter II: In your name_**

**_(crossover chapter)_**


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